Backlash after former porn star Yua Mikami criticized for wearing wedding dress

The backlash against former porn star Yua Mikami’s attempts to build a mainstream career for herself in fashion has continued with viral and divisive criticism of her wearing a wedding dress.

Mikami was appearing as a guest at a public talk that was part of a boat racing event in Yamaguchi on July 27.

A twentysomething married woman who wanted to wear the same dress design for her bridal photos wrote a vitriolic post on X on July 27 about how her plans were no ruined by the ex-adult video performer. It got a surprising amount of attention (120.5 million views, 152,000 likes, and 3,3000 comments at the time of writing).

The dress I was planning to wear for the domestic shoot was worn by an AV actress at an event, which is just awful. The dress is an original costume from a certain studio, so I can only wear it there, and I was really looking forward to it, so I have already bought my own shoes and accessories and came up with a concept. If I’d known it was going to be lent to an AV actress, I wouldn’t have signed the contract. What should I do?

As the responses began pouring in, the woman stuck to her guns.

I’ve been getting a lot of nasty replies saying it’s the kind of dress an adult video actress would wear, but who would dream of a wedding store lending out a dress to an adult video actress? And I’m going to wear an authentic dress for the pre-wedding photo shoot and wedding ceremony, so I wanted to show my individuality in the post-wedding photo shoot. I hope people don’t make it sound like I’m at fault.

Some agreed that the AV star had tainted the dress design for others, since so many would now associate the dress with a porn star (a glorified sex worker, in their eyes).

Others rushed to defend Mikami, arguing she had ever right to wear whatever she wanted and, regardless, was now retired from porn.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that Mikami wore the dress, since what brand can control who wears its clothing? But it’s more that Mikami knowingly wore the dress at a public event (for which she was presumably paid an appearance fee) and then posted pictures of herself wearing it as part of her social media self-publicity, instantly meaning it is seen by her huge following (she has 4 million followers on Instagram alone). (To be clear, it seems the first images of Mikami posing in the dress — to which the now-viral criticism was reacting — were possibly posted by someone else related to the event. The exact sequence is not clear to us. Either way, Mikami subsequently posted several pictures on her popular Instagram on July 28.)

Mikami’s choice of a wedding dress is also not coincidental, playing up to the erotic trope (common in porn and gravure) of the idol bride who you get to ravage on her wedding night. Someone with her experience and savvy regarding self-image would know perfectly well the kind of fantasies she was suggesting.

We don’t know if she was loaned the dress for free by the brand, as many celebrities receive such freebies and perks, or if she just hired or bought the dress herself, in which case the brand would have no knowledge unless it did background checks and vetted its customers, which would constitute discrimination.

Mikami famously started off as a music idol in SKE48 but left the group after a scandal involving singer Yuya Tegoshi, and began an eight-year porn career.

She retired from JAV in summer 2023 at the age of 30 and has since focused on developing an apparel brand called MISTREASS. Her attempts to establish herself in fashion, though, have met with a backlash from non-fans. Last year, the hat brand CA4LA was criticized by some women online for using Mikami as a model. Mikami has threatened to sue people posting “discrimination” about her online.